“Oh, Beauty,” he sighed at me. “I suppose I might have expected it.” He reached for my hand, but I stepped away from him. He had sent Giles away without talking to me about it, and therefore he was no longer really my friend.
“I’m not going until after my birthday, though,” I said in a formal voice which only shook a little. “Which is day after tomorrow.”
“If you’re determined to go, I should think going before would be safer,” he advised me. “Just in case there’s something to the curse. Or another fire.”
“There is undoubtedly something to the curse,” I said, “Just as there is undoubtedly something to Sibylla’s burning the tower. However, I will simply not be driven from my home before I am ready to go!” The truth was that the thought of leaving made me so panicky and scared I couldn’t do it. I kept putting it off, until this, until that.
“What shall I tell your aunts?” he asked. “They’ll wonder why you aren’t dead?”
“Tell them I escaped certain death through a miracle. An angel wakened me and opened the door to let me out.” I thought I was being pert, but he told them exactly that. Sometimes I think Father Raymond doesn’t take things as seriously as he pretends to. Except love. He saw I loved Giles, and he took that seriously. I did love Giles. I do love Giles.
Between the fire and Father Raymond’s mention of the curse, I decided it was time to make a few defensive plans. While Sibylla and her mama muttered in the corner and I sat safely among the aunts, being exclaimed over for having occasioned divine intervention, I came up with a stratagem.
The working of it was dependent upon the fact that Beloved knew nothing at all about the curse. It was not something that had been generally discussed (though the aunts had whispered about it when they thought I couldn’t hear). Even I had not known of it until I read the first page of Mama’s letter, but no one knew about that page of the letter but me. Add to this the fact that Beloved adored parties. She loved being “me.” As a result, on the following day, she eagerly fell in with my plan that she play my part on my birthday in order that for a few hours I might escape—so I told her—the edge of Sibylla’s tongue. We had spent hours talking over every aspect of the Sibylla matter, and Beloved liked her no better than I did.
Papa was to be home for the celebration. Of the neighboring nobility, a few of the nearest had been invited to a modest banquet in honor of the occasion. Beloved and I spent some time going over the guest list so that she would know who they were and how to address them. She loved to speak the affected Frenchiness of the aristocracy rather than the uncouth but lively tongue of the common people, and she did it so well that no one knew she had not been reared in the castle. We shared this ability of mimicry, she and I, which we must mutually have inherited from Papa, though I had never known him to make use of it.
Very early on our birthday morning, she came to my room—the room I was using in Papa’s wing, though I had slept in the stables overnight, just to be safe—and put on my clothes. I told her to be careful of her language and not to look for me until dark. Then I went out, put on my cloak and waited halfway down the Duchess’s Staircase to see what happened. As I had more or less expected, by midmorning Beloved was being fussed over and adorned and prepared for the banquet, while the aunts peered into corners (looking for spindles no doubt) and made little cooing calls to the Virgin for protection against evil as they fingered their missals in their pockets.
Grumpkin was not fooled. He knew who was who, and he insisted upon following me about in a worried fashion, so I tucked him into one of the deep pockets, his large, scowling face peering out, visible to me but invisible to anyone else. Though he was a big, heavy cat, I preferred to do this rather than shut him up in the stables. Later, of course, I was to thank God that I had done so. God. Or someone.
[Not I! Israfel and I had never concerned ourselves with her cat!]
Afternoon came. The guests began to arrive for the banquet, which Aunts Lovage and Basil had arranged to be held in the late afternoon or very early evening in order to allow the guests to get home before full dark. The aunts buzzed about in a flurry of hospitality, and I saw Beloved, momentarily ignored, looking annoyed, as though she had a pain. I saw her yawn and lick her teeth. I followed her as she wandered back through the large dining hall and opened the door leading to the enclosed garden outside the high windows.
I knew then that her expression had been the result of simple hunger. She had been so busy being dressed and fussed over, she hadn’t had any lunch, and now she was starved and had remembered the apricot tree in that garden. We’d spent many stuffed and sticky July afternoons there, fighting the wasps for the fruits. The moment the door opened, I smelled them, heavy as incense, more fragrant than I had ever known them to be before.
Grumpkin muttered something and put a paw on my hand. I stopped to hush him before following her. “Be still,” I said. “You don’t want her to know we’re here.” Then I went out after Beloved, arriving just in time to hear a fading burst of cackling laughter and catch a glimpse of a pair of burning eyes disappearing in midair.
[I
